If you click “view” in the activity stream, it takes you directly to the forum topic so you can reply. So that pretty much already exists. Or is there some other functionality you are looking for, like linking directly to the reply anchor?

sounds easy enough to do, just need to edit the entry.php theme file and add some function around the reply button if the type is ‘new_forum_post’ or new_forum_topic (note: acomment-comment class invokes the jquery for the activity comment reply)

if the activity action is ‘new_forum_post’ then the secondary_id is the post_id

and i believe if a ‘new_forum_topic’ the primary_id is the forum_id (otherwise on new_forum_post it is the group_id)

post_id or forum_id – you can grab the link to the group forum topic (some buried functions in bb or bp)

@3sixty: Yes… it already exists… but it’s confusing, unintuitive and inconsistent. Users don’t understand the difference between updates and forum postings in the activity stream. They don’t understand the difference between replying in the activity stream and replying in the thread. Any why should they? Reply means reply. Period. The way it works now is just plain broken. You end up with people replying to thread in the stream then wondering what the heck happened when they visit the thread later and don’t see their contribution. So the only alternative is to turn off activity stream replies for forum postings. But that’s even worse. Now you have bits of conversation in the stream that you CAN reply to (updates) and bits of conversation in the stream that you CANNOT reply to. Well you can… but you have to know enough to click “view” to take you to some other place and reply there. Very inconsistent. Too much friction. And not at all intuitive. I think that in the case of forum postings, replies made within the activity stream go to the THREAD… NOT to a permalink comment page. Think like a user. Like a human. Not like a programmer.

@rich! @ etiviti Seems like a good solution to have the reply show up in both places (i.e. so activity stream comments to a forum posting go to the permalink page but also to the original thread). I looked at your test group however and didn’t find any info. Could you perhaps post some code? Or if the testing is successful, maybe even put it out there as a simple plugin?

Don’t know about any tickets but this sort of issue – an issue imho that is of a hugely serious nature, striking at the heart of the whole user experience, users == the people this is built for ! – is what I was hoping would be brought and discussed in the thread I started on usability issues partly started as a balance for the thread on the BP API, two threads that could run side by side as it felt to me at the time that this project was simply too weighted towards the API and the programmer with too little input from architect designers, usability experts and as such somewhat unbalanced.

I would like and expect when that word ‘Community’ is bandied about to see some form of dialogue between core developers and the wider community base of users and developers, sadly I don’t see that apart from mentions of dev ‘chats’ from time to time.

Personally – although I will do so – I don’t think hacking files around or having to develop a plugin every time an issue is raised a particularly strong way of developing an application, simply feeling as though one is shoring up the core with an ever increasing mountain of additional code to support.

I think I’ll create a ticket as an ‘enhancement’ suggestion… that activity feed comments made on blog posts and forum posts go to both the activity feed / permalink “view” page AND the original “canonical” version of the conversation (said blog or forum post). Seems very confusing as it works now.

I think @takeo hit the nail on the head with this one, Buddypress would be a billion times more amazing and revolutionary if it had the type of features he’s describing.

Right now I just have to turn off Forum Topic Activity replies, and hope they understand the difference. With some tricky css and changing the way the structure of my site is layed out i’ve been able to get your average user to understand it.. kind of.